Leaning In, Pushing Back, and Turning Cannot Into Can: The Real Life Discourses of Women Leaders

Organisation Studies

Speaker:

Robyn Remke, Copenhagen Business School

Date:

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Time:

4.00 pm

Location:

Bateman Lecture Theatre

Further details

The opportunities for professional women in business have changed dramatically in the past 50 years. Women who were once relegated to administrative and secretarial positions now find themselves poised to become the very professionals they once supported. However, shortly within their tenure as young professionals, many women found that their experience of the workplace differed from that of their male colleagues (Hegewisch, Williams, & Zhang, 2012). Significantly, women are not promoted to leadership and managerial positions as often as men (Desvaux, Devillard, & Sancier-Sultan, 2010; Moe & Shandy, 2010). They either opt out (Stone, 2007), hit the glass ceiling (Buzzanell, 1995; Zane, 2002), slip through the pipeline (Barsh & Yee, 2012), are lost in the labyrinth (Eagly & Carli, 2007), get stuck to the sticky floor (Rainbird, 2007), or fall off the glass cliff entirely (Haslam & Ryan, 2008; Ryan & Haslam, 2005).

This talk begins with a discursive analysis of these ‘lean in’ texts. It then examines the discourses of actual women business leaders, discourses that illuminate workplace dynamics far more complicated and contradictory than these ‘lean in’ discourses suggest. In fact, women business leaders actually do lean in, push back, and use other similar techniques in their everyday leadership, but in nuanced and flexible ways that better respond to and negotiate the paradoxical dynamism of the workplace. Analyzing these discourses within the context of the new executive feminism or ‘lean in’ discourse enables managers to better address workplace challenges that contribute to the declining number of women leaders.

References:

Barsh, J., & Yee, L. (2012). Unlocking the full potential of women at work (p. 12). New York, NY: McKinsey and Company.

Desvaux, G., Devillard, S., & Sancier-Sultan, S. (2010). Women at the top of corporations: Making it happen (p. 22). McKinsey and Company.

Eagly, A. H., & Carli, L. L. (2007). Through the labyrinth: The truth about how women become leaders. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Haslam, S. A., & Ryan, M. K. (2008). The road to the glass cliff: Differences in the perceived suitability of men and women for leadership positions in succeeding and failing organizations. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(5), 530–546. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.07.011

Her research uses a critical/feminist lens to explore the gendered nature of organizations and organizing. I study the ways that organizational members embody practices such as leadership, diversity management and parental leave policies through communication. I also study alternative forms of workplace organizational structures and gendered identity in the workplace.